All My Sons by Arthur Miller – ★★★★★
Arthur Miller's All My Sons returns as a study of how easily ordinary people excuse harm when it benefits them. It pays attention to behaviour, class aspiration, and the quiet ways families bury the truth to maintain the lives they have built. A heavyweight cast delivers two hours of moral conflict, love and fractured family bonds against the backdrop of post-war America. Money and success loom like the true villains in Arthur Miller's All My Sons, and an initially fuzzy moral landscape sharpens as the story unravels.
The show begins with a simple image: a memorial tree for Larry Keller struck down by the wind. It is obvious, but the production uses it well. Larry is never on stage, yet he is the most defining presence in the Keller home. Everything the family does—from Kate Keller's (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) refusals to Joe Keller's (Bryan Cranston) cheerfulness—is organised by their inability to admit that Larry may never return.
Bryan Cranston's Joe Keller is not played as an obvious villain. He is recognisable: warm, social, and convinced that providing financially is the same as doing right. Cranston captures how easily charm can function as concealment. Joe's jokes and neighbourly friendliness are not a veneer for cruelty but extensions of a worldview where being likeable is treated as proof of goodness. The production understands that this is more believable than a villainous archetype.
Paapa Essiedu takes longer to find Chris, the surviving son. In the first act, his American accent is slightly distracting, and there's a stiffness in his delivery. By the second act, that slips away, and his performance becomes deeply lived in. Essiedu settles and begins playing Chris with a frustrating mix of hope and denial. His portrayal reaches its painful peak once Chris's world shatters under the weight of what he didn't know he knew, at the grief of realising that your principles are built on lies.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste gives the most unsettling performance as Kate Keller. She treats her belief that Larry is alive as a practical decision rather than madness. Jean-Baptiste understands that accepting Larry's death would implicate Joe, and implicating Joe would destroy everything they have built. She is strategic in her worldview, not a delusional grieving mother but someone who holds a lie because telling the truth would collapse the family socially and economically. It is a sharp interpretation that rescues Kate from sentimentality, and the more I considered it while writing this review, the more her calculation stood out as the production's most disturbing and compelling choice, and ultimately my favourite character.
Jan Versweyveld and An D'Huys use colour extraordinarily in the lighting, set design, and costuming. Every member of the Keller family wears a shade of blue, tethered to memory. Kate's is a deep, saturated blue, almost drowning her. Joe's is pale and evasive. Chris's sits in a seafoam green-blue, somewhere between attachment and letting go. Ann Deever's (Hayley Squires) arrival in red marks her as the only person who has moved on. Whenever Larry's memory tightens its grip on the story, cold blue light washes over the backyard.
The second act opens with Chris dismantling what remains of the broken tree as the stage is lit in unrelenting blue. The light darkens instantly, as if the house itself knows. What follows is a devastating confrontation. Essiedu's heartbreak here is arresting. Chris's idealism is not naïve; it is wounded. He survived war only to find that home offers no moral safety. It is a very bleak truth.
The final scene is played plainly. The production trusts the audience to understand what it means without stretching for tragedy. Cranston's final moments are gripping and harrowing. Joe's realisation—"They were all my sons"—lands effectively because it is far too late.
Essiedu's slow start is a noticeable flaw, particularly given Chris's importance to the story's moral arc. But to deny five stars to Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Bryan Cranston, Paapa Essiedu, and a genuinely tight ensemble cast would be like the Grinch trying to stop Christmas.
★★★★★
By Koehun Aziz-Kamara
All My Sons is showing at the Wyndham’s Theatre until 07 February.
